Loving Local: CSA #10

I purposely saved last week's CSA #10 bounty to be shared during the MA Farmer's Market/Blogathon week. And I usually have about a week delay before telling you about it.

I'm really interested to see what other MA Loving Local Blogathon bloggers get from their CSAs (see the participants' blog posts here and here!). I've heard all sorts of wonderful stories about PA, MI and NH people and what they from their CSAs (apparently MI starts out with more cherries than a family of 5 can handle... which makes me itch with jealousy). Week #10 for us was very mysterious- Julie from MHOF was away, so warned us that we'd get no "what to expect email" last week, so come Monday night, when we usually receive our weekly emails, I was so eager for Wednesday to come, I felt like I did on Christmas Eve, 1988.

We received:
two bunches of lettuce, a big, fragrant bunch of basil, some curly parsley, swiss chard, more carrots (much larger this week), big beets,

pole beans, a white pepper, 2 peaches, 2 cucumbers, a zucchini, another of the stripey green squashes, 4 summer squash (one was already boiling away on the stove by the time I got to photographing everything), potatoes (ignore those tomatoes, those are from Blossoming Acres in Southwick, MA),
and some beautiful flowers (not pictured are the cosmos, larger sunflowers and big pointy purply things that I put in a larger arrangement on the mantle, in the room-of-no-natural-light, aka, the living room.)

What did I do with it all? Sadly, nothing exciting- yet.

I cooked down the beet greens and swiss chard (along with last week's chard) and froze them (wash, rough chop, bring water to a boil and boil the greens for 5 min, then drain and cool and freeze).

I ate a cucumber in my salad. I ate the lettuce in salad. I ate 2 of the carrots in... you guessed it, salad.

I've sliced and boiled the squashes, and sprinkled with either S&P, or salt and Penzey's Sunny Spain (yum).

I plan to pickle the beans, but if I don't get to do that, I'll freeze them for some fall/winter fun (speaking of which, does anyone know: should I cook the beans and then freeze, or just freeze raw?).

Beets: I'm accumulating SO many beets, I really need to do something with them! I found this intriguing recipe, which my husband thinks is revolting (my husband, who dislikes both beets and eggs, so I can't really blame him- anything stuffed with mashed potato would be equally foul for me). Stuffed beets. I'm totally trying it, I just don't know when. Fortunately, my beets have lasted very well, because unless I send some down to my mom in CT, I'm the only one eating them. If you have a good beet recipe, please send it my way!

And I have both this week's and last week's peppers hangin' out, waiting.... I don't know how to deal with them. I'm allergic to green bell pepper, but it's a weird allergy- it burns like a ring of fire with raw, and has a very unpleasant tingle with cooked. I can't eat things that touch raw green pepper, but I can eat things that touch cooked green pepper (yay I can have fajita veggies!). I happily eat hot peppers (in small bites), and cooked red bell peppers. But these peppers... I don't know what they are. Are they safe? I have no idea. Maybe my husband can do something with them, and tell us how it went.

So what's next in the MA Farmer's Market Blogathon week? How I really used that squash. And for the first time ever, I'll tell you about our CSA within 24 hours of receiving it!